Fortune Cookie

We have lived here for over two years now, and in that time have sampled many types of Chinese food, including Ayi's Anhui homestyle; local cuisines from Yunnan, Sichuan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan; hot pot, noodle shops, Peking duck, street dumplings, and xiaolongbao (soup dumplings).

But we’ve never eaten Chinese food like this before . . . here.

the familiar florescent sign gives us our first hint of what's to come

Fortune Cookie is the classic American Chinese food experience, down to the notorious takeout containers and that annoying waving cat.

We ordered crab rangoon, chow mein, sweet & sour pork, and orange chicken. We can't wait to go back for their beef & broccoli and some chop suey.

Their fortunes may be a bit unusual, but the rest of the experience was spot-on authentic – we were transported! And it was delicious.

only the fortune inside the cookie reminds me that we're still in Shanghai

Mooncakes

We just celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival last week, which is a national holiday dating back to ancient China, and is meant to worship the harvest full moon. Similar to American Thanksgiving, there’s generally a lot of eating and drinking with family. Typical customs during the modern holiday include moon-gazing and eating mooncakes.

fancy box of mooncakes

In my opinion, mooncakes are a bit like our fruitcakes: supposedly a beloved traditional treat, but actually not that incredibly addictively delicious. Like most Chinese desserts, they aren’t overly sweet. The outside is a dense eggy cake, often with fancy flowers and calligraphy imprinted on it. The filling is traditionally bean paste, but I’ve seen everything from meat- to ice cream- filled mooncakes.

mooncake surface view

cut open to reveal the filling

This year, Pat*’s boss gave him a box of lotus-yolk mooncakes, which he brought over to share with us. I’m not sure what I was expecting on the inside, but I guess I wasn’t thinking quite so literally.

egg yolk!

Yes, that is an egg yolk surrounded by lotus bean paste. I liked the bean paste, subtly sweet and a rich texture. The yolk, well... it wasn’t my favorite part.

中秋节快乐！(Happy Mid-Autumn Festival)

*Pat is Matt's dad, he also lives in Shanghai

Pei Pa Koa

Delivering a baby in China is kind of a crazy experience. And that’s as much as I’m going to say about that on this blog.

But I will tell you about the coolest thing I brought home from the hospital, besides the baby of course.

It just so happened that I was coming down with a cold right before going into labor, and so by the time Avery was born I had a constant tickle in my throat and the strong desire to cough. This isn’t the most pleasant experience in recovery from a c-section. And between my other meds and breastfeeding, my treatment options were limited.

Luckily, Traditional Chinese Medicine includes hands-down the best cough syrup I’ve ever used. This stuff is legendary; I’ve heard of expats returning to their home country with stashes, or desperately visiting their local “Chinatown” in search of that amazing remedy they remember from their days abroad.

the box

It’s called Pei Pa Koa and it’s magical. It tastes, well, like typical cough syrup actually. It has the appearance and consistency of molasses, and contains a bunch of Chinese herbs and extracts mixed with honey. One tablespoon of this incredible elixir and I didn’t have the urge to cough all night long.

the syrup

I guess I'm joining the ranks of the crazy repatriates who are hooked on their TCM remedies.

Sidewalk Butcher Shop

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My father-in-law, who has now lived in Shanghai for four and a half months, recently told me that China might convert him to vegetarianism.  I just can’t understand his position, seeing as how meat is advertised so appetizingly here.  Take, for example, these delectable offerings along a local market street.  Tyler and I enjoyed these sights (and accompanying smells!) as we walked to music class one morning.

street-side fish & fowl

cut to order, as the duck looks on (I believe those are eels curled up in the back)

future Peking Duck?

getch'er sausage 'ere!

gutted fish provide shade for the butcher's block

ducks in a row

Are you hungry yet?

Flavor Confusion

You know that popular flavor often denoted with a little leaf or green letters/packaging?  It is delicious when paired with chocolate, makes a yummy ice cream flavor, and is typically used to freshen breath in products like gum, lozenges, and mouthwash.

If you grew up in a culture like mine, you’re probably thinking mint.

But in the culture where I’m now living, this means green tea.

I have lived in China for almost a year and a half now, and still at least once every few weeks I will buy something “mint” flavored that makes it all the way into my mouth before I realize my mistake. 

Don’t get me wrong, I actually really like green tea as a drink (in fact, I’m enjoying a cup as I sit here typing).  I even enjoy the matcha green tea flavor used in desserts like ice cream and chocolate truffles and Starbucks lattes.  I’ve been known to purposefully buy that flavor many a time. 

Yet I cannot shake my association with certain products, certain labeling, and a certain flavor: mint.  And when I want – then expect – something mint-flavored, the green tea taste becomes rather repulsive.  I wonder how many more times I will repeat this mistake before I learn.  Probably just in time to move back to the US and shudder when my chocolate-covered matcha ice cream bar tastes surprisingly minty…

Supermarket Musings

I guess it makes sense – given a cuisine centered around stir-fry – that the largest aisle in the supermarket would be devoted to cooking oil.

and none boast of low-cholesterol, unsaturated, trans-fat free, omega-3, etc.

Close runners-up include aisles for tea, tissues (because what we use to wipe our nose, they use as kleenex/TP/napkins/facecloths), and ramen (below).

the dorm student's dream: an aisle full of instant noodles

Foreign Food: kumquats

When I started this blog, I intended to chronicle our forays into foreign food much more often than I have so far.  It isn’t for lack of gastronomic adventures – sea slugs, chicken feet, and a red bean milkshake come quickly to mind – but rather because I usually forget to take photos until the evidence has disappeared.

However, the kumquat has become one of my favorite treats here, and as the season is ending, I had to share it … at least visually, which sadly is not nearly as satisfying.

my afternoon snack, a bowl of kumquats

Although I first tasted kumquats elsewhere, these little zingers are native to China.  They are considered good luck here, frequently given as gifts during the Lunar New Year.  Kumquats taste a little bit like tangerines or oranges, but more tart.  Their thin rind is actually the sweetest part, while the inside flesh can be mouth-puckering sour.  

post-sliced, pre-seeded kumquat

 
They can be eaten like grapes, just popped in whole, chewed, and seeds spit out at the end.  However, I prefer a slightly more complicated – and I imagine more refined – method of enjoying them.  First I roll the kumquat between my fingers, a technique recommended by kumquat aficionados to release the essential oils in the peel and soften the inside flesh, breaking down a bit of the sourness.  Then I slice it in half and gently shake out the seeds.  And for the final touch of magic, I dip it in sugar.  Between the fragrant and flavorful rind, sour flesh, and sweet sugar crystals, it is heavenly!

this one is just about to be enjoyed by yours truly

Gutter Oil

Xu Ayi cooks for us twice a week, which is wonderful for two main reasons: I don’t have to prepare two meals a week, and we get to eat authentic home style Chinese cooking on a regular basis.

On Wednesday, she made fried duck.  She had a bit of leftover oil, and so she placed it in a bowl and set the bowl in the oven.   

(Side note: her relationship with the oven is worthy of an entirely separate post.  For now, I’ll just say that she believes its primary purpose is as an insulated cupboard to store used oil.)

Matt and I later discussed the merits of saving what is perhaps a half-cup of used cooking oil, which brought us to the conversation of gutter oil.  It’s lovely stuff.  Enterprising gangs have created a booming illegal business that deals in the reprocessing and trade of recycled cooking oil.  They dive into sewers where street runoff accumulates and skim the used oil -- plus whatever sticks to it -- that has risen to the surface.  After similarly collecting oil from restaurant garbage bins, animal fat from slaughterhouse waste, and plenty of delicious toxins along the way, they “clean” it through a series of dubious science experiments, and sell it as cooking oil to street vendors and hole-in-the-wall restaurants.   Yummy!

The Chinese government is attempting to crack down on this obviously harmful activity; just last week, they arrested over one hundred people involved in the gutter oil operation.*  It’s interesting as a foreigner witnessing this collision of entrepreneurialism, industrialization, and desperation.  Rapid economic growth begets a rapidly expanding chasm between the haves and have-nots, and the result is this strange world of swindlers whose creativity might be celebrated if it wasn’t so utterly disgusting.

In a country where people are slogging through gutters, skimming used cooking oil off the top of sewage, and reselling it for a small profit, our little half-cup of oil in the oven is looking pretty darn delicious.

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* Here’s a WSJ article with the story of the gutter oil arrests

Moganshan: the Meal

This is the story of a meal that became an adventure.

It all began when we decided to travel out of town for the weekend, which of course is made more dramatic by using public transportation, bringing a baby, and being in an unfamiliar foreign country.  I don’t want to belabor the first six or so hours of our trip, but the important part is that we arrived at our hostel completely famished, only to find out that their refreshments consisted of beer and snickers.  This would not satisfy.  Now, a wise traveler might ask the hostel caretakers for some suggestions of where to find food, but no no, not us arrogant fools.  We just ventured out towards what we thought might be “town” and began a long and desperate journey.

searching for food

either this is a restaurant, or things are about to get awkward

After miming various acts of eating while completely butchering the Mandarin words for restaurant, meal, food, and eat, the local farmers pointed us up a narrow winding road with a few houses dotted along it.  One had a beer billboard on the front and a “welcome” sign on the open door, which to us indicated that perhaps it was a restaurant.

our hostess

We walked in to find a precocious piggy-tailed girl playing on her computer.

I asked her – in Mandarin, go me! – where her parents were, and she lead us back out the front door and around the side of the building, where a woman was bent over hacking at something.  The girl indicated to her mother that they had visitors, and Mom gathered her duck and chicken (the “something” previously being hacked) and ushered us back into the house.

hostess, chef, and what would become our lunch in the bowl

Soon we were caught up in a whirlwind of herbal teas and shrink-wrapped dishes and a menu of all Chinese characters and no illustrations.  As I fumbled with my iPhone’s translator apps and Matt clumsily repeated what he thought was the Mandarin word for chicken and Paul wondered just how much beer could quench his hunger, the Mom-turned-chef had an epiphany.  She motioned for us to follow her through the house to the backyard, which – lo and behold – was the kitchen!

"kitchen"

Here she thrust various ingredients at us as we nodded in approval.  Bok choy looking vegetable?  Okay, that seems to be the town staple so it must be locally grown.  Eggs?  Yes, they come in their own little containers, sanitary and harmless.  Chicken?  Well, we saw the poor thing earlier so we know that’s fresh.  And with Matt’s recollection of the Mandarin words for rice and beer, we finalized our order.

I’m a little ashamed to say that once the food arrived, I was far too hungry to pause and snap photos.  There were chicken feet and gristle and all sorts of goodies chopped up into what we would recognize as meat, but it came in a delicious brown sauce with scallions.  There was a heaping pile of fresh scrambled eggs.  There was sautéed bok choy with ginger and garlic, crunchy and smooth all at once.  And finally there was steaming hot sticky rice to fill the last empty space in our stomachs.

It was nothing like we had experienced, and yet exactly as we expected.  Simple ingredients and complex flavors.  Familiar tastes in novel combinations.  Delicate dishes to satisfy hearty appetites.  Home cooking in a foreign place.  It was quite the meal.

Foreign Food: passionfruit

Perhaps the simplest culinary adventure in any foreign place is sampling the unfamiliar local fruits.  Some may remember that I chronicled my discovery of dragon fruit in Bangladesh on our previous blog.  Well, the fruit explorations have begun again.

This time, we began with a fruit we’re familiar with by name and juice, but never as a whole piece of fruit.  The passionfruit is an odd little guy.  Its exterior looks like a wrinkly plum, and feels like a half-deflated stressball.

Once cut open, however, it reveals its mushy, super-juicy guts.  After I cut into the first one, upon looking at the opened fruit I announced to Matt that this one had spoiled.  But apparently, this is what to expect.

We scooped out the seeds, and quickly realized that one passionfruit is too tiny to be worthwhile.  So we cut and scooped through our little collection.

Sadly, the rind is simply discarded.  We were left with the passionfruit guts, which taste – shockingly... – like passionfruit juice, something akin to a mix of orange and pineapple juice.  The difference from the plain juice, though, is that the whole fruit has textures: the seeds have crunch like a pomegranate, and there’s also a pulpiness reminiscent of fresh-squeezed orange juice.  Yum!